Website Advertisement

Google AdSense
The best one I ever use. The ad matches your content (most of the time). The money is sweet. However, there is a big drawback! If google think you click on the ads yourself or there is any abnormal click, you are done with them! They don’t give you any warning or chance to explain. They don’t reveal how they judge either. I am accused of abnormal clicks on my website. So, they terminate the contract with me. Any non-withdrew money will be canceled and return to the advertisers.

I think I am lucky because when google cancel my adsense account, I have only $30 in it. When I google (Yes, I am still a big fan of them) other people who receive the same treatment, I found that some of them got canceled with around $90; just right before the withdraw minimum.

Google Adsense is easy to use. I still recommend this tool when the website starts. Meanwhile, I am thinking that my competitors can easily cut this revenue source by clicking the ads on my website. All they have to do is clicking again and again so that google would consider there are abnormal clicks on my website. I wonder if they have any solution for it.

SEO專家的幾個小建議

前幾天跟一個做SEO(Search Engine Optimization)的人聊天，有幾點心得來紀錄一下：

1. 做SEO需要資源。要提升page rank最快的方式還是link exchange，所以做SEO的人手上可能都有好幾個大站，讓這幾個站之間的互換link (high quality link)。當他的客戶要求要做SEO的時候，他也可以利用這幾個網站來提升客戶的page rank，一般人要這樣做的話，可能只能乖乖花錢去買Link Exchange。

2. SEO的重點在於提升自己在search result裡面的排名，因此要不要做SEO的關鍵在於：你要的關鍵字有沒有必要搶。如果你的關鍵字沒什麼人用的話，其實只要少少的post跟把website url submit出去，應該你的網站就會是第一名了。舉例來說，我用我的名字來搜尋的話，當然關於我的資料會出現在第一筆，這樣的情況就不需要做SEO。


3. Title 跟 Meta content 還是有他的重要性在。即使現在搜尋引擎都說他們對於這些description的重視程度越來越小（因為很多人都在這一塊亂寫，希望能夠得到搜尋引擎的青睞），可是這些東西卻是最實際出現在搜尋結果中的東西，所以該做的還是要按部就班的做好，不要偷懶。

Some Website Marketing Steps I would Take

Submit your URL to Search Engines
SubmitExpress (http://www.submitexpress.com/submit.html)
Google (http://www.google.com/addurl/)
Yahoo (http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit)
Bing (http://www.bing.com/docs/submit.aspx)
Open Directory (http://www.dmoz.org/)
Google & Yahoo Directory
Google Product Search

SiteMap Creation Tool
http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/
http://xmlsitemap.com/

How to use Linkedin.com

Linkedin is a very good resource to expand the network. You can search people with certain background or certain title as long as they are in your network. It is very easy to expand your network. You just invite people with “LION” (Linked-In Open Networker) on their title. They are happy to connect with you. For example, “Allen (Ting-Lun) Lin” would love to receive connect request from you. Hahaha. Once they accept your invitation, you can expand your search to these LION’s friends. Therefore, you can easily reach people with specific criteria. (Be careful! Don’t input LION on keywords field and start to add people without checking. In this way, you may invite those who work for a company named LION and not happy to be contacted by strangers.)

However, there were two restrictions using this site:
1. You can only connect with someone you already know. (Site policy to avoid annoyance from people you don’t know)
If you wanna reach unknown people, you can ask one of your connections to introduce you to his/her friend. Or, you can pay Linkedin to send out short message to introduce yourself. But even you pay, the number of short message you can sent is really limited.

OpenX & OpenX Market

OpenX是一套免費的網頁廣告管理軟體 (website ads management)，他的功能非常強大，可以讓你管理各式各樣的廣告，例如：CPM（每一千次展示要收多少錢）, CPC（每一次點擊要收多少錢）, tenancy（擺在特定的位置依段時間要多少錢）等等，也可以去設定某一個banner要放多久，輪播時候的比重等等。OpenX Market也是一個很有趣的東西，讓你的廣告欄位可以放到網路上競標，假如網路上的廣告主願意出比目前更高的價錢來買你頁面上的位置，該位置就會出現新的廣告，而不是原本網站設定的廣告，當然你必須要去啟動這個功能才行。

有鑑於OpenX中文介紹不多，這一個專題將會完全用中文來寫。由於目前可以找到的資源都是英文的，所以我自己的OpenX介面也是使用英文介面，本文章所包含的專有名詞我還是保留英文的寫法，這樣參考網路上的資訊的時候比較好識別。

OpenX由下列幾個元素組成
1. Advertiser

MediaWiki

為什麼要寫這一篇？因為改的地方真的太多太雜了，而且從一開始一路改到現在已經很久了，我需要記錄一下，這樣下次要架站的時候才知道要改些什麼。

超有用資訊 super useful information (Mediawiki FAQ)
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_FAQ
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:FAQ
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Support_desk

普通有用
http://www.mwusers.com/wiki/index.php?title=Common_installation/configuration_problems

Mediawiki SEO articles
http://www.taommo.com/archives/2007/05/23/mediawiki-sites-and-seo-optimization/

關於我 About Me

I majored in engineering 12 years ago, but basically I can't do any coding now. Given the situation, I still build up a website from scratch and I am trying to draw more traffic to it. The website marketing journey starts from here.

This blog is to keep record for my long and lonely journey with tons of try and error. I will use both English and Chinese to write this blog; whatever comes to my mind first. I hope I can setup an website marketing SOP for myself. In this way, I won't miss some basic online marketing stuff in the future.

Your comments are welcomed and appreciated!